1. Why play this game?
2. Why write this guide?
3. Saves
4. Leveling
5. Inventory
6. Hitting Stuff
7. Keybindings
8. Settings
9. Races
10. Classes
11. Skills
12. Repairing
13. Spells
14. Treasure Chests
15. Bugs
16. Versions of this guide
17. Contact info and crediting

Dungeon Lords is a very generic fantasy action RPG. It is less immersive than Skyrim, has worse action than Crosscode or Dynasty Warriors, and has less popular multiplayer than the Borderlands series. The one thing it seems to get right is that if you set the Monster Difficulty to Advanced or Elite and the Monster Spawns to More, then you can turn most of the game into a mobile, unending fight.

I like hordes in games, whether they are enemy hordes or allied hordes. I also like grinding until I can stride across a game world like I own it. This game has both of those features.

Dungeon Lords Steam Edition does not have an up to date manual and is not intuitive. What manuals can be found refer to older versions. Some things are explained adequately in-game. Some things are never explained in-game. This guide is part manual and part advice. It is not an exhaustive manual. I have not played every class, done every quest, and such. But there are too many questions on the Steam forum and not enough guides and answers. So here’s an attempt.

Dungeon Lords will auto-save when the player transitions from one zone to another, when a save is loaded sometimes, when a game is exited sometimes, and when a new game is started. It does not automatically delete or overwrite any of these saves as far as I know. You will have to delete some of them yourself if you don’t want to scroll through hundreds of them to find a useful earlier save.

A few areas like the Fargrove Temple in the Temple District do not count as zone transitions, so the game will not auto-save when going in and out of such areas. The Wilderness, including Arindale and Skuldoon, counts as one giant zone, so the game will not auto-save there.

The game will often stop to load new terrain in the Wilderness. It has crashed on me twice so far in the Wilderness. Save often.

The game often appears to ‘hang’. A game ‘hangs’ when it seems to freeze without any sort of loading indicator. Dungeon Lords Steam Edition does this when loading enemies a lot. Do not immediately panic when this happens. Give the game a few seconds. If the game hangs for more than thirty seconds then you might have to use Alt + F4 to close the game or something.

I am not aware of any level cap in Dungeon Lords. I have seen a pic of a character with a level over 300.

Dungeon Lords uses 4 different types of points in it’s leveling system. They are Experience Points, Bonus Points, Skill Points, and what I will call Expertise Points(the game never names this 4th type). Experience Points are gained by killing enemies and completing quests. If you get enough Experience Points then you will level up. The listed Experience Points to the next level might be inaccurate, I’m not sure, but it’s not worth worrying about.

When you level up you will get 3 Bonus Points, 3 Skill Points, and sometimes a spell determined by your Core Class. Bonus Points are used to increase your Attributes(Strength, Intellect, Dexterity, Agility, Vitality, and Honor). Getting enough Experience Points can also earn you a Skill Point separately from leveling up. Spending a Skill Point on a Skill will cause that Skill the gain 100 Expertise Points.

Expertise Points can also be gained by using some Skills while fighting high enough level enemies. This works with Weapon Skills and Magic Skills. Maybe it works with other Skills. This secondary Expertise Point gain seems to stop occurring when fighting enemies 10 or more levels below your own. At that point you’ll have to seek out higher level enemies or spend Skill Points to raise Skills higher. There are plenty of Experience Points to get Skill Points from, so losing secondary Expertise Point gain at some point is not a big deal. There is also something in the stickied patch notes on the Steam discussion forum for Dungeon Lords Steam Edition about the secondary Expertise Point gain not being able to raise a Skill above the Hero’s current level.

As you level up some of the numbers on the Stats&Equipment window, like Parry/Dodge and Protection, go down. I suspect this is because the game is calculating these numbers based on fighting an equal leveled enemy. If you play this game like me you will have a level much higher than most enemies. These numbers can be increased again by putting points into the Dexterity and Agility Attributes as well as the Armor, Shield, and Parry Skills. The decreases with level do not seem to be worth worrying about.

Your Inventory is limited in Dungeon Lords Steam Edition. You have 20 slots for weapons, 20 slots for armor, 20 slots for jewelry, 20 slots for potions/spells/scrolls/lockpicks/repair-kits, 20 slots for keys and other quest items, and 20 Junk Bag slots. The Junk Bag can contain items from any of the other 5 sections of the inventory.

Learned spells and Nether Katals are stored in the Spellbook, not the Inventory. I have not found any upper limit on Nether Katal storage (434 Rat Tails at the moment).

Some key items are undroppable. Some of these undroppable items are skippable (like the Sewer Bridge key(the gap can be jumped)) or optional(like the Custard Manor keys(by not playing a rogue and not doing that quest)).

Some users have reported problems with their Keys&Quests inventory section becoming full of undroppable items and becoming unable to progress the game. This is reportedly a big issue in one dungeon that spawns many undroppable items. Be careful about what you pick up and save often.

To select an item from the Inventory, left click on it. To equip an item, open your Inventory and Stats&Equipment menus, select the item, then left click the appropriate slot in the equipment window. Some items, like Galdryn’s Horn, cannot be equipped in any slot despite showing up in some part of the Inventory for equippable items. To drop an item, select the item from your inventory, then right click while the item is selected. Some items are undroppable.

Dungeon Lords uses auto-targeting for any ranged weapon and many spells. There is an option for “Target Cone” in the options menu, but turning this off merely hides what you are auto-targeting, it does not disable the auto-targeting. The only way to manually aim is to be so far away from any enemy that the game won’t lock on to any of them.

Using a melee weapon on an enemy will cause the game to auto-target it.

Targets can be manually cycled using the Tab key by default.

Attacks can miss a target and strike something else. Your attacks can hit enemies you were not aiming at. Enemy attacks can hit other enemies. Player attacks seem to be unable to harm non-enemies. I have never succeeded at hitting a guard or any other non-enemy. But that won’t stop them from complaining about me attacking them.

For an attack to hit a target four things must go right. 1. The attack animation must hit the target or you will see no feedback. 2. Then the attack roll must succeed or you will see “MISS”. 3. Then the target must fail to parry or you will see “PARRY”. 4. Then the target must fail to dodge or you will see “DODGE”. If all of this went right then you should see a red damage number. The odds of success on the 2nd part seem to be effected by the attacker’s Strike stat and by the attacker’s level compared to the target’s level. The odds of success on the 3rd part seem to be effected by the attacker’s Strike stat compared to the target’s Parry stat and by the attacker’s level compared to the target’s level. The odds of success on the 4th part seem to be effected by the attacker’s Strike stat compared to the target’s Dodge stat and by the attacker’s level compared to the target’s level.

Ranged attacks target some specific point on each enemy and some of these points are poorly placed. Ranged attacks target the very top of the head on Goblins, Goblin Archers, and Goblin Raiders. Goblin mages and Goblin Ballistas are easy enough to hit. Snakes are very hard to hit with a ranged attack unless you are in melee range and above the snake. The snakes are tolerable but the game should aim at the center of the torso or head on the goblins.

Most of the keybindings can be found under the Keyboard menu. The Keyboard menu is located in Main Menu → Options → Keyboard.

To set a keybinding, left click on one of the boxes beside of the desired function and press the key (other than BACKSPACE) you want the function bound to. Keys can be unbound by trying to assign both boxes for a function to the same key. Ex: If revive is assigned to R and HOME, then trying to set the box with HOME to R will unbind the HOME key.

The Numpad + and – keys change the zoom on the minimap and these functions cannot be bound to anything else.

Mouse wheel up and down changes the camera zoom.

Press E to activate ladders and doors. Many doors are mere decoration and will not open or take you to another area or zone. Movable doors that are trying to close can damage you and will try to close on you again and again like some horror movie scene.

The Save menu pulled up by the ESC key does strange things to the game. It prevents enemies from starting actions or moving. It does not pause in-game timers, allowing for most status effects to wear off and for Hit Points and Mana to recover. It allows you to wait out spell cooldowns. Older versions of the game had this strange behavior with all the menus. But beware. Poison does not go away on its own. You must use a Cure Poison potion, an Unpoison spell, or the Shrine in the Fargrove Temple District Temple to cure poisoning. Poison will kill you on the Save menu if you wait too long.

The patch notes on the Steam discussion forum mention that the Monster Difficulty setting increases the chance of getting rarer items when set to Advanced and Elite.

The Random Encounters setting does not limit fixed encounters. It is possible to run into a large fixed encounter while running from a random encounter. It is possible to get a random encounter while fighting a fixed encounter.

If you are trying to make progress in the story, then consider setting Random Encounters to Less and Monster Difficulty to Novice. Unending hordes of enemies can be fun in open terrain, but they are a pain when they block a doorway or swarm you while you’re trying to open a treasure chest.

There a 9 races in the game. They are Human Male, Human Female, Elf Male, Elf Female, Dwarf Male, Urgoth Male, Wylvan Male, Thrall Male, and Zaur Male. You can only select your race at the start of the game and you cannot change it.

There is a guild in the game called The Sisterhood. If you want to use the Classes from The Sisterhood, then you must pick Human Female or Elf Female at the start of the game.

Other effects of selecting races are minor enough to ignore. Elves can get some rentable sword when they reach Arindale. I think Urgoths can get some hammer weapon from a blacksmith in Skuldoon. Humans, Dwarves, and non-Urgoth demihumans get nothing as far as I know. So pick whatever you like unless you’re going for those The Sisterhood Classes.

Classes in Dungeon Lords Steam Edition are slightly complicated and I do not have the time or cheat engines to test everything. So there is a lot of ‘I think it works this way.’ in this section.

There are 3 tiers of Classes in Dungeon Lords Steam Edition. You can have 2 tier 1 classes, 2 tier 2 classes, and 1 tier 3 class for a total of 5 classes.

I recommend picking a tier 3 class that you want and then picking another tier 2 class that is not ruled out by the tier 3 class.

You select 1 tier 1 Class at the start of the game. This is your Core Class. It determines which spells you will learn when you level up.
The 4 tier 1 Classes are Fighter, Mage, Adept, and Rogue. You can pick up a second tier 1 class by joining the guild for that class. The Fighter’s Guild for Fighters, the Celestial Order for Adepts, the Guild of Mages for Mages, and the Guild of Mystery for Rogues.

You can also join the guild associated with your Core Class. This opens up more things to buy in shops related to that guild. You can do this after getting your second tier 1 Class if you want to be on the safe side. Be on the safe side.

If you are trying to join the Guild of Mystery, be aware that the quest to get into the Slums could be failed in earlier versions of the game and is probably still like that. So be sure you have enough money before going into Fargrove Jail and be sure you get the password from the guy you can bail out after you bail him out but before he leaves. Fargrove Jail is just north of the west exit of Fargrove, in the same zone you enter when exiting the Theater.

The Eastern Houses and The Sisterhood do not have tier 1 Classes. They only have tier 2 and 3 Classes based on your tier 1 Classes.

If you are trying to join The Sisterhood, be aware that the quest for it was failable in earlier versions of the game and is probably still like that. So be sure when going into Fargrove’s Temple District for the first time that you rescue the woman who calls out to you and that you do not let the fight get far away from her and that you talk to her and go through any desired dialogue options before she disappears.

Tier 2 Classes are composed of Pure Classes, Hybrid Classes determined by both of your tier 1 Classes, Eastern Houses variants, and The Sisterhood variants.

Tier 3 Classes are extensions of tier 2 Classes, except for the Shadowlord Class offered by Staroxia in her tower in the Forbidden Lands. The Shadowlord Class can be taken by anyone. Shadowlord might require that you take any tier 2 class first. I’m not sure.

The Pure Classes are:
Fighter → Knight → Lord
Mage → Sorcerer → Wizard
Adept → Celestial → Stargazer
Rogue → Nightblade → Assassin

The Hybrid Classes are:
Fighter&Mage → Battlemage → Deathlord
Fighter&Adept → Paladin → Crusader
Fighter&Rogue → Hunter → Rangerlord
Mage&Adept → Warlock → Necromancer
Mage&Rogue → Trickster → Illusionist
Adept&Rogue → Druid → Cabalist

Eastern Houses variants are:
Fighter → Samurai → Warlord
Mage → Shugenja → Kenjasai
Adept → Monk → Dragonlord
Rogue → Budoka → Ninjalord

The Sisterhood variants are:
Fighter → Valkyrie → War Angel
Mage → Bladewitch → War Witch
Mage → Enchantress → War Angel
Adept → Enchantress → War Angel
Adept → Valkyrie → War Angel
Rogue → Bladewitch → War Witch

You cannot have two tier 2 Classes from The Eastern Houses or The Sisterhood. So you can have only one of the Valkyrie, Enchantress, or Bladewitch Classes on one Hero. You can also only have one of Samurai, Shugenja, Monk, and Budoka.

Classes might have Attribute and Skill requirements. This was a thing in older versions and I’m not sure if it is still the case. Even Classes like Assassin used to have Honor stat requirements. Keep leveling and putting points into everything if you get some dialogue along the lines of ‘I would like to invite you into the guild, but we have standards.’.

Tier 1 classes grant an active Skill that is listed in its own General tab on the Spellbook menu. These can be used like other spells but have no spellbook items to learn them from or scrolls to cast them from.

I am not going to list every skill and its function here. There are too many Skills and some of them are duplicated across classes and I’m not sure if duplicate Skills still give a discount on raising that Skill like it did in earlier versions.

Weapon Skills enable you to use that type of weapon. Higher levels of a Weapon Skill increase the Strike score and damage with that weapon type.

Armor Skills increase Protection from armor in a strange way according to the patch notes on the Steam discussion forum. The skill for the armor type you are wearing has full benefit, while other Armor Skills have decreasing benefit based on how removed from that armor type the Skill is. Ex: Leather armor gets full benefit from the Leather Armor Skill, 1/2 benefit from the Cloth Armor and Chain Armor Skills, 1/3 benefit from the Scale Armor Skill, and 1/4 benefit from the Plate Armor Skill. Armor Skills also decrease the movement penalty for wearing that type of armor. If you want to get maximum movement speed then you might want to wear no armor or very little armor.

Magic Skills enable a Hero to use that type of magic. Higher levels of Magic skills improve spell parameters like damage, range, and duration.

Every class gets the Inspect and Disarm Skills. Rogues also get the Sneak, Pick Lock, and Pickpocket Skills.

Sneaking is super useful for dealing with looting, menus, and treasure chests without getting interrupted. Sneak does not work on everything. Thieves can still stab at you if they bump into a sneaking Rogue and Killer Bees seem to detect Sneaking from any distance. Sneak cannot be used while in combat. Not casting spells and not hitting anything or getting hit for a few seconds will put you out of combat so that you can sneak again. Enemies hitting each other also prevents use of the Sneak Skill.

Items stolen by the Pickpocket skill can show up on the ground and do not have the sparkle effect that normal loot has. If you want that bonus loot you’ll have to pay attention or spam the E key.

Every class gets the Athletics, Scout, Bargain, Repair, and Bash Skills.

Athletics is good for the Backflip function and also increases move speed, swim speed, swim kick(jump while swimming to go straight up), and fall damage resistance. Fall damage scales with your Max HP, so fall damage can be very high even with a high Athletics Skill. The roll part of Athletics is not very useful and the side-step function from earlier versions is gone. Ranged combat has sideways running and can even attack a target behind you and offscreen as long as it is auto-targetted, giving ranged combat a very strong version of circle-strafing. Melee combat is reportedly a mess without the side-stepping. I mostly use ranged combat so this has hardly bothered me so far.

Scout increases the distance from the Hero that the fog of war is removed from the map. Scout also has some functions for detecting enemies and loot but these seem to not function past a certain level. If the Mystic Vision spell is cast then enemies might show up on the Map Menu again, but not on the minimap. When I tried this they were showing up a couple of mountain-ranges away on my Map Menu when they were feet away from my Hero at the time.

Bargain improves the prices for buying and selling from stores and also for getting things repaired at stores.

Repair is a mess and gets its own section.

Bash can be used to bypass the whole Lock-picking part of the game. Level 16 Bash Skill is reportedly enough to get through a Level 12 lock every time. Level 12 locks are reportedly the highest level locks in the game.

Some classes have skills listed directly below the class on the Classes&Skills menu. These are called Diabolic skills. They can be increased like other skills.

The Magic Weaponry skill enables the use of some of the magic effects on weapons. If you try to use a weapon without enough Magic Weaponry skill, then you can still swing it around but some of its magic effects will not work.

Armors(except belts), shields and melee weapons have durability. Durability decreases when getting hit for armor, when blocking for shields, and when hitting for melee weapons. If durability reaches 0 then the weapon will not break as in being removed from your Equipment and Inventory. It will merely provide no or low Protection for armors or do very little damage for melee weapons. They can be repaired later.

When you are at a shop there is an icon in the bottom-left of the shop window that can be left-clicked to start repairing things. Once you get the repair cursor over an item the game should list a price to repair it. Left-click the item to repair it and right click to stop repairing things. Be careful as right-clicking also quick-sells an item if the repair cursor is not active.

Repairs can also be done in the field if you have the Repair Skill and repair kits. Open both your Stats&Equipment menu and your Inventory menu. Right-click the repair kit to bring up the repair cursor. Left-click an item to repair it and probably use up the repair kit. Right-click again to stop repairing.

The big issue with repairing is that repair kits are finite in the shops. There are several workarounds for this.

12.1 The patch notes mention that there is a random chance for shops with a repair kit in their stock to get more repair kits. So don’t buy every repair kit from a shop with them. Leave 1 repair kit in the shop’s stock so this random chance will be rolled. If you do buy all of the repair kits from a shop, sell one repair kit back to the shop so that the shop has 1 repair kit in stock. I am not certain if this random chance is rolled when the shop menu is opened, when the dialogue menu is opened, when the shop is entered, when the shop’s zone is entered, or what.

12.2 Repair from the shop menu and use mostly ranged weapons and magic. This conserves durability and repair kits for when they are most needed.

12.3 Elves can reportedly drop repair kits. I have yet to see this myself.

12.4 Fight with broken gear. If you pump enough points into Strength and Weapon Skills then you can deal adequate damage even with 0 durability melee weapons. Belts and Jewelry don’t have durability so you can get some Armor stat and thus some Protection stat from them even if all your other armor is broken.

12.5 Fight with temporary gear. Use those goblin swords and grim shields that dropped in your last fight. The enemies drop many of them.

Fighters learn Rune Magic, Mages learn Arcane & Nether magic, Adepts learn Celestial & Rune Magic, and Rogues learn Nether magic.

The spells learned when you level up are determined by your Core Class, the one you choose at the start of the game. Any other Classes you take will not cause you to gain spells at the time you gain a level. Taking additional Classes does enable you to learn spells that you get from shops, monster drops, or treasure.

To learn spells like this, right click on the spellbook in your Inventory menu. If it worked then the spell should now be in your Spellbook menu. If there is some red text on the spellbook, then you need the thing indicated by the text before you can learn that spell. If you buy from a shop a spellbook for an unlearned spell that you can learn, then it will be auto-used. So check your Spellbook menu before panicking.

Spells cannot be learned from scrolls. Scrolls enable instant, one-time casting of spells, with no cooldown, even if the caster does not otherwise know the spell or school of magic.

The Scribe Skill states that it provides a chance to not use up scrolls when casting a spell using a scroll. However, I have not tested if the Scribe Skill actually works.

Some spells can be cast from non-scroll items. This is called invoking. Right click on the item to invoke the spell. These items can also be placed in the hotkey bars for easier access. Some invokable items require that you wear them while invoking them.

Casting a spell requires Mana, that the spell not be on cooldown, enough casting time, and a Nether Katal if casting a Nether spell.

Spells no longer have charges like in earlier versions and nearly all spells now have cooldowns. There is no point to hoarding copies of spellbooks for spells you already know. Drop or maybe sell them.

Mana costs for spells do go up when leveling up, but this increase seems very small and a few points into the Intellect stat should counteract it if it ever becomes an issue.

Mana does recover while in combat, however this is slow. Mana recovers much faster out of combat. Whether you are in or out of combat is determined by if you have hit something or if something has hit you recently. Casting any spell also puts you in combat, even if no enemy is around. I have had many enemies a few feet from me (Moon Beasts that would not go far off the shore of Moon Island) and still been out of combat. Enemies hitting each other also puts you in combat and prevents use of the Sneak skill.

Ray spells (Solar Ray, Lightning, maybe others) no longer automatically acquire a new target after killing a target. You can get more damage out of these spells by pressing Tab to get new targets, but this seems to not be worth the effort.

Summon spells have those bothersome cooldowns now. So you cannot have 50 rats out by spamming Summon Rats. You can have 4 rats, 3 bats (from using the bat summoning amulet), 2 wolves, and some undead out at the same time, though.

If you summon something while swimming, the water seems to prevent the summoning.

Summoned creatures leave no loot. This applies to your own summons (no endless hoards using Nether Katals from your own summoned creatures) and to enemy summons. Witches often have summoned and non-summoned enemies of the same type around them, so some can leave loot and some can’t.

The Levitation spell can be used to climb some slopes that should not be climbable. I have accessed the Vale of Ruin from the southern Elven Lands by using Levitation and some mouse-wiggling to float my way up the mountain slope. No jumping was required and it is super finicky. This might also require a high Athletics score. I had Athletics 10 when I did this. I also tried running off the western edge of the map. There is an invisible wall preventing running off the western edge. There is no invisible wall at the southeastern corner of the map. You can fall off the map there and generate an error making the game crash. I do not recommend that you use Levitation in this way as it might break quests or something. You speed-runners might get some use out of this. *loads an earlier save* Save often.

Treasure chests drop random loot. This loot can be save-scummed(saving before a random event and loading the save until a desired result is achieved).

When opening a treasure chest, there is a mini-game to be played. A bar will be displayed with 7 of 9 symbols. This bar might be easy to see or very dark or utterly black depending on your Inspect Skill. Some of the symbols will be displayed below the 7-symbol bar as well. When you attempt to pick the lock on a chest a rhythm game style line will move across the 7-symbol bar. When the line is over a symbol you are supposed to click on that symbol on the lower bar. Higher Disarm Skill will make the line move slower. Higher Lockpick Skill enables lockpicks to be used to make the line move slower.

Earlier versions of the game allowed treasure chests to be cheesed with the 3rd level Slow Time spell to make the line move very slowly. This is now the 8th level Time Warp spell and I am not sure if they can be cheesed in the same way.

The order of the symbols in the 7-symbol bar is randomly determined. If you get a bar that wants you to click for the first symbol, you can leave the chest, run around for a bit, and try again for an easier set of symbols.

The symbols can look like a big blur of squiggles at first. Each separate symbol is highlighted as the line goes over the 7-symbol bar. The symbols are easier to keep track of and tell apart if you give them names.

The symbols can be viewed separately by right clicking the game in your Steam Library, clicking on Properties, clicking on the Local Files tab, clicking on Browse Local Files, opening the interface folder, then opening the traps folder.

Treasure chests can have traps. These traps can kill you. Beware.

If the game does not recognize the letter keys but does recognize other keys like the escape key, then quit the game, exit out of Steam, log back into Steam, and restart the game. The game should recognize the letter keys again. I have seen this bug in another game on Steam, so I suspect this is more related to Steam than to Dungeon Lords Steam Edition.

Version 1.0
The first and maybe only version. Published on July 30, 2019.

I do not want to be contacted. If you post on the Steam discussion forum for Dungeon Lords Steam Edition I might see it and answer a question. Maybe. Probably not.

As you might be able to tell from the author’s name, I do not want or need any crediting. Crediting might still be useful for tracing claims on game mechanics, though. So credit anonyyyyyyyyymous if you must. Duplicate from this document as you will. I do not have a copyright, trademark, or such on Dungeon Lords Steam Edition or this guide.